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| The Gigabyte Gaming A16 gaming laptop weighs 2.2 kg (4.85 lbs.). |
The ongoing memory crisis has made it super hard to buy a gaming laptop that is both fast and affordable. But even in a market plagued by these issues, you can still find some decent gaming laptop deals. Best Buy, for instance, has discounted the Gigabyte Gaming A16 gaming laptop with an RTX 5060, 32 GB DDR5 RAM, and a 1 TB SSD to $1,099.99.
The discounted price, while not super impressive, is quite good by today’s standards. 32 GB of DDR5 alone costs much more than $200. The same goes for storage and GPUs, which have also gotten more expensive than last year. In this climate, finding a machine that balances next-gen graphics with ample memory is a rare win.
What You Gain and What You Lose
Now, the relatively low price is a clear signal that the Gigabyte Gaming A16 is not a high-end/premium machine. So, you’ll have to be comfortable losing some niceties like a metal chassis, an OLED screen, and Thunderbolt 4. You’ll also have to deal with loud fans (Get a pair of SteelSeries Arctis Nova 1P gaming headphones on Amazon).
However, this doesn’t mean that the Gigabyte Gaming A16 is a bad gaming laptop. On the contrary, our RTX 5070-powered review SKU nailed the fundamentals. The chassis may be plastic, but the internal engineering tells a different story.
Performance That Punches Above Its Weight
Our review Gigabyte Gaming A16 unit displayed strong performance that stays consistent. The SKU on sale swaps the RTX 5070 for an RTX 5060 but keeps the 10-core/16-thread Core i7-13620H. So, you can expect the RTX 5060-powered SKU to also benefit from stable performance.
Since the Core i7-13620H is still a capable CPU, the Gigabyte Gaming A16 on sale is well-equipped to deliver superb FHD gaming performance. The RTX 5060 laptop can play games like the superb Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced at 1080p/high at around 60 FPS. For competitive gamers, dropping settings to medium or low will easily push frame rates past the 100Hz mark, making the most of the 165Hz display.
The Little Things That Matter
The Gigabyte Gaming A16 also boasts good inputs, a 400-nit 100% sRGB IPS display, a diverse port selection, solid RAM/storage upgradability, and decent battery life. We measured over 7.5 hours of runtime in our WLAN test. This is remarkable for a gaming laptop, allowing you to actually use it for productivity or media consumption without being tethered to a wall outlet.
The keyboard offers satisfying tactile feedback, and the trackpad is responsive—though you will likely use an external mouse for gaming. The port selection includes HDMI, USB-C, and multiple USB-A ports, ensuring you can connect all your peripherals without a dongle.
Final Verdict: Is It Worth It?
If you are looking for a no-nonsense gaming laptop that prioritizes performance and future-proofing (thanks to the 32GB RAM) over premium materials, the Gigabyte Gaming A16 is an easy recommendation. It occupies a sweet spot in the market that is increasingly rare: true performance without the flagship price tag.
You can check out the deal for yourself and secure this laptop before stock runs out: Gigabyte Gaming A16 at Best Buy.
In a market filled with compromises, this Gigabyte model proves that you don't have to sacrifice performance for affordability—you just have to know where to look.
